


Souvenirs

by ShinyHappyGoth



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Corpses, Gen, Implied Mass Death, Noah's Ark, Perceived Patterns which May or May Not Have Been Intentional, Podfic Available, Scene: Flood in Mesopotamia 3004 BC (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The Mass Death Is a Given Really, What with the Flood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20037478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyHappyGoth/pseuds/ShinyHappyGoth
Summary: What do an eagle lectern, a slightly charred book, and an emergency starter crank have in common? Here's a hint.Or, Noah's Ark accidentally acquires an extra snake.





	Souvenirs

Forty isn't a number. Well, it _is_, of course, but not in this case. It's a figure of speech, an order of magnitude. It rained for a bloody long time, that's the point, and the eight humans on board weren't keeping exact count, not what with tending to the menagerie and keeping themselves afloat despite a total lack of any prior sailing experience and the exciting discovery of a delightful condition called seasickness.

They were certainly much too preoccupied to notice the presence of an extra snake.

Morbid curiosity had kept Crawley in the area after Aziraphale had left. He wished it hadn't. On board the ark was less depressing than off it, to say nothing of drier, but it was cramped, which he hated, and the smell was indescribable. It was beyond indescribable, it was... it was ineffable, is what it was. He gave a faint, hissing laugh; that one should get a choice reaction out of the angel. Indignant pedantry, probably. He'd have to find him again, once this blew over.

Short of swimming, though, he was stuck here for the duration. He could miracle himself into and out of things, but not all the way to dry land, wherever that might be found. And he didn't fancy flying in this downpour.

Satan, but it was boring, though. He tried a few minor temptations on the humans, just to keep busy and have something to put in his report, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do without risking revealing his presence. Not much to tempt them into, for that matter. The most obvious temptation would be to shirk their duties—they were a diligent lot, he'd give them that, presumably one reason they were Chosen—but he saw that ending badly, and not in the good way. His job was to win souls, not finalise an extinction event. Anything else major would probably lead to familial discord, which would be wonderful in normal circumstances but here might produce the same end result.

So he mainly lay low, blending in with the other snakes (mostly assorted vipers, one pair of desert cobras) or slithering through the shadows, and eavesdropped.

Lots of bickering. They really didn't need his help on the discord front, the situation was promoting that plenty. Whose turn it was to muck out the most disgusting stalls, whether the work was being apportioned fairly, whether someone was taking more than their share of rations. Who snored, who chewed too loudly. Noah and Naamah did their best to maintain harmony among the younger generation, but they were clearly feeling the strain as well.

Commiseration. How sick everyone was of the smell, of dried food, of the gloom and the damp and the ceaseless sound of the rain. Noah loudly declared that he had had enough of animals for one lifetime, and when this was done he would tend plants exclusively. Fresh fruit, that was the ticket, and the others moaned their agreement.

By general consensus, talk of the drowned world was taboo except in the evenings, after dinner. Then they would tell stories, and play games, and sing, and allow themselves to remember. An anecdote of one of Japheth's childhood friends, the recipe a neighbour had been meaning to give to Salit. Small things, made huge now.

And the days stacked up, and blurred together, and became forty.

* * *

Crawley was curled up between the dromedaries, soaking up their body heat, when the noise changed.

The pounding rain, omnipresent for the past moon-and-a-half, was slackening, to be replaced by pounding feet. Crawley could see Nahlat's sandals racing past the camel stall on her way to the nearest ladder as Ham called from above. Distant creakings and slammings came from the top deck.

Crawley waited several careful minutes before he unwound himself and glided out of his hiding place, dodging a lazy volley of spittle one camel lobbed at him on sheer principle. The ease with which he wound himself up a ladder in this form might well have been alarming, had any humans still been below decks to see it.

On the upper storey, the change was manifest. The cubit-high window had been opened wide all around the roof, and sunlight was streaming in. Around the deck, previously listless animals were perking up*, and birds had burst into song.

Sunlight. Real, actual, blood-warming sunlight. _Finally_. The light from those gemstones they had around the ark was pretty, certainly, but it wasn't warm, you couldn't _bask_ in it.

More to the point, sunlight meant clear skies, and clear skies meant flying without sodden wings, and that meant he could finally get _off_ this wretched ship.

The roof hatch was open. The humans probably wouldn't be coming back in immediately, not after forty blessed days. He risked a peek.

Technically, the rain hadn't actually stopped yet, but it was down to a light drizzle, and the remaining clouds were rapidly thinning. The humans, out on the roof, were laughing with relief and pointing at a band of colours arcing across the sky. Must be that rain bow the angel had mentioned. A simple application of optics, if Crawley was any judge, different wavelengths refracting through the droplets, but still an impressive sight. _Definitely worth slaughtering an entire civilisation for,_ he thought sarcastically.

He ducked back inside and curled up under a feed bin to wait. It wasn't as long as he had feared; soon enough, everyone was back to their chores, looking happier than they had for the entire journey so far. Japheth and Arisisah lingered the longest, but within the hour they were back to work as well, reporting that the colours had faded with the last of the rain.

As soon as the way was clear, Crawley was up and out on the roof. The fresh air was the sweetest thing he could remember since scrumping in Eden, and the sunlight felt so good on his skin, he was tempted (ha!) to just curl up and nap. He resisted the urge; no telling when the humans might be back up top, now that the option was available. Best not waste time. He reared up and broadened, formed limbs, sprouted hair. Flexed his wings.

The view from the roof the ark was... what he had expected, really, but disheartening nevertheless. The water stretched to the horizon in all directions, featureless and peaceful, as long as you didn't look too closely at what was floating in it. Aziraphale had said the flood would only be local, but "local" was relative. An entire river valley, for example.

Nothing for it. Crawley did a few stretches and took to the air.

He ascended in a widening helix, gaining both distance from the ark and height. Height was the priority; go high enough and, unless the water covered an entire hemisphere, he would be able to spot land. Eventually. Admittedly, getting the maximum view of the Earth's surface† would require going multiple planetary radii beyond its atmosphere, but still.

He'd got about a kilometre up, and was starting to think there _might_ be a smudge at the edge of visibility, when a new cloud coalesced right in his flight path.

He veered, dismayed. The cloud looked like a cumulonimbus, and it had formed far too quickly to be purely natural. Hadn't they had _enough_ of that? Wasn't that what the rain bow had been about? A promise to knock it off?

The cloud piled itself higher, although it remained just the one, and moved to cut him off with absolutely no regard for the prevailing winds.

Ahhh. Nothing to do with the mortals or the Earth, then. This was his own bespoke storm cloud. Lovely. He banked and maintained a steady distance from it.

The cloud crackled inwardly with lightning.

"Sod off!" Crawley snapped at it. "I'm not _trying_ to get back _in_, I just need some bloody altitude!"

The cloud replied with a small bolt in his direction.

"Oi!" Crawley dodged the warning shot, then blessed himself for letting them see him flinch. _Some_ angels, he thought pointedly, would have the courtesy to _discuss_ matters face to face before resorting to brute force.

The second bolt was harder to dodge.

"Fine! _Fine!_ I'm going! Fine! בן אשת חיל," he muttered, and began the glide back down. The cloud let him go. He had the distinct impression that it was watching him.

He had enough information anyway, he decided. There was definitely no land within more than a hundred kilometres. Of course, he could always pick a direction and trust he was skilled enough at navigating by the sun and the stars not to end up flying in circles over a vast and featureless expanse of water, with nothing to break the monotony and no company except the bodies in the water and nothing to occupy him but the inside of his own head...

Swearing profusely, he returned to the ark.

* * *

He spent the better part of the next year asleep, although he asked the blunt-nosed vipers to wake him if anything interesting happened. There was a jolt about four moons into his nap, after which the rocking of the waves stopped. He considered this a great improvement.

* * *

Five moons or so later, one of the vipers nudged Crawley and informed him that the humans had sent a bird out to look around. Makes sense, Crawley said, and went back to sleep.

* * *

A week after that, the vipers reported that the humans had sent out another bird. That's nice, said Crawley, and buried his nose deeper in his coils. 

* * *

Another week (Crawley groaned). The humans had sent the second bird out again, and this time there was some kind of commotion. That was about all the mortal snakes could understand of the situation. Crawley grumbled and went to investigate.

The humans were holding a meeting in the galley. It was a little hard to follow, listening through the wall halfway into the conversation, but apparently the bird—a dove?—had brought back something. Which suggested that the waters had finally subsided enough for it to find something _to_ bring back. Ham was maintaining that this meant they could go ashore now. Shem said the hilltops visible from the roof (Crawley perked up) were still tiny and there wouldn't be any point; Salit argued that dry land, even if only for a few minutes, _was_ the point. Nahlat observed that _exposed_ land wasn't necessarily _dry_ land, and wouldn't sinking to her knees in mud be a fine end to the voyage. Noah declared over everyone that, while this dove business was a good sign, they would all be waiting for _official_ permission to leave the ark, and everybody get back to work.

After everybody did, Crawley slithered into the galley and climbed the counter to see what the dove could possibly have brought back. A pebble? A blob of mud clinging to its feathers?

It was a leaf.

He stared at it.

It was an olive leaf, long and oval, and a fresh, vibrant, _live_ green. Crawley's mind flashed back suddenly to Eden. It was that kind of green. He hadn't realised just how much he had missed plants. Somehow, despite its _severe_ overwatering, the one this leaf had been plucked from was still going strong. Something, at least, had survived the destruction.

He stayed staring at the leaf until footsteps, not _too_ close but approaching, reminded him that it would not do for them to find him in here. Delicately, he breathed a bit more life into the leaf, just to keep it from wilting, before making a hasty exit.

He did not go back to sleep.

* * *

One more week later, the dove was sent back out, and this time, it did not return.

This, Crawley decided, was good enough for him. An entire human could have gestated in the time he'd been on this blessed boat. Enough land and plant life to sustain a dove would, if nothing else, allow him to navigate to _anywhere but here_.

First, though.

Slipping once more into the galley, he found the leaf where he knew it had been left. It was, if anything, even greener than when it had been brought aboard.

Not as though they _needed_ it. It had served its purpose just in being brought. Carefully, he took it in his mouth.

Out on the roof, he resumed his preferred form and spat the leaf out. He tucked it carefully into his braid, a minor miracle ensuring that it wouldn't fall out.

Then he took off.

He would, he fancied, try to track down that angel once he'd filed his report.

He could do with a laugh. 

* * *

Footnotes

* * *

*Diurnal animals, anyway. You can't please everyone. [return to story]

†Approximately 49%. Asymptotically approaching 50%, of course, but in Crawley's ex-professional opinion, flying an infinite distance for that last fraction of a percent was unlikely to be worth the bother. [return to story]

**Author's Note:**

> This _might_ end up with more chapters! It stands all right on its own, but the whole idea was to explore what appears to me to be Crowley's disaster souvenir collection, and obviously that has further potential. I just... need to have ideas for more episodes first. Suggestions are welcome! A "disaster" in this case has to involve physical destruction (so no plagues, for instance) and Crowley needs to plausibly have been present for it (not much of a restriction, he gets around, but it does favor Great Britain). The Great Fire of London would be a prime candidate, obviously, but they needn't be that huge, famous, or factual, none of the canon incidents were. (Although I have not ruled out the Boston Molasses Flood.)
> 
> "I'll name-drop the women aboard the ark," I said. "It'll be a neat bit of trivia," I said. "Wikipedia probably has their names," I said. [Ahahahahaha.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wives_aboard_Noah%27s_Ark#Summary_table) Thanks, entire history of the Abrahamic religions, you've been a big help.
> 
> It didn't fit the tone as things worked out, but please picture Family Game Night aboard the ark.
> 
> The only actual dialogue in this thing, and it's literally Old Man Yells at Cloud.
> 
> בן אשת חיל = "son of a virtuous/valorous woman"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Souvenirs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22991326) by [ShinyHappyGoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyHappyGoth/pseuds/ShinyHappyGoth)


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